NEW YORK CITY — New York has become the first city in the nation to end solitary confinement for all inmates under the age of 21, the mayor's office announced Tuesday.
The official end of the practice, which the city calls punitive segregation, comes nearly two years after the city's Board of Correction voted to end solitary confinement for young adults in prison — and after scathing reports of abuse and other failings at the city's main detention complex, Rikers Island.
“Today’s announcement shows that New York City is leading the nation down a new path toward rehabilitation and safety," said Mayor Bill de Blasio in a statement.
"[Department of Correction] Commissioner Joseph Ponte has established viable options for managing and disciplining young inmates that can bring about better outcomes while reducing violence — and has done so years ahead of other jurisdictions.
"New Yorkers can be proud that their correctional facilities are pioneering these smarter, more humane approaches.”
The plan puts an end to locking up young inmates who've committed prison violence for some 23 hours a day, instead placing them in "enhanced supervision housing," which includes special programming and services aimed at rehabilitation, officials said.
The new policy expands on the city's growing effort to curtail solitary confinement. In December 2014, it ended the practice for 16- and 17-year-olds in city prisons, and this past June it stopped placing 18-year-olds in solitary confinement as well.
New York remains one of only two states that can charge 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, but last summer the mayor also said he was planning on moving the youngest inmates into a separate facility and out of RIkers altogether. Rikers currently has nearly 10,000 inmates.
According to officials, young adults between the ages of 18 to 21 comprise between 10 to 12 percent of the city's jail population, but commit about a third of the violence in New York City's jails.
The end to solitary confinement is a piece of a larger reform aimed at impeding prison violence. According to the mayor's office, the DOC has registered a 40 percent drop in the most serious assaults during the first eight months of 2016 as compared to the same period in 2015.
